Iran executes opposition figure Ruhollah Zam after he was implicated in anti-government protests

Mr Zam is one of several people to have been put on death row over participation or links to protests that rocked Iran between 2017 and 2019.

Iran on Saturday executed Ruhollah Zam, a former opposition figure who had lived in exile in France and was implicated in anti-government protests, days after his sentence was upheld.

State television said the "counter-revolutionary" was hanged in the morning after the supreme court upheld his sentence due to "the severity of the crimes" committed against the Islamic republic.

Judiciary spokesman Gholamhossein Esmaili had on Tuesday said Mr Zam's sentence was upheld by the supreme court "more than a month ago".

London-based rights group Amnesty International, in a statement after his verdict was confirmed, described Mr Zam as a "journalist and dissident".

It said the confirmation marked "a shocking escalation in the use of the death penalty as a weapon of repression."

Iran's Revolutionary Guards announced the arrest of Mr Zam in October 2019, claiming he had been "directed by France's intelligence service".

State television said he was "under the protection of several countries' intelligence services."

The official IRNA news agency said he was also convicted of espionage for France and an unnamed country in the region, cooperating with the "hostile government of America", acting against "the country's security", insulting the "sanctity of Islam" and instigating violence during the 2017 protests.

At least 25 people were killed during the unrest in December 2017 and January 2018 that was sparked by economic hardship.

Mr Zam, who was granted political asylum in France and reportedly lived in Paris, ran a channel on the Telegram messaging app called Amadnews.

Telegram shut down the channel after Iran demanded it remove the account for inciting an "armed uprising".

'Corruption on earth'

Mr Zam was charged with "corruption on earth" - one of the most serious offences under Iranian law - and sentenced to death in June.

State television aired an "interview" with him in July, in which he appears as saying he believed in reformism until he was detained in 2009 during protests against the disputed re-election of ultra-conservative president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

He also denied having instigated violence through his Telegram channel.

Amnesty has repeatedly called on Iran to stop broadcasting videos of "confessions" by suspects, saying they "violate the defendants' rights".

Mr Zam is one of several people to have been put on death row over participation or links to protests that rocked Iran between 2017 and 2019.

Navid Afkari, a 27-year-old wrestler, was executed at a prison in the southern city of Shiraz in September.

The judiciary said he had been found guilty of "voluntary homicide" for stabbing to death a government employee in August 2018.

Shiraz and several other urban centres across Iran had been the scene of anti-government protests and demonstrations at the time over economic and social hardship.

Three young men were also sentenced to death over links to deadly 2019 protests, but Iran's supreme court said last week that it would retry them over a request by their defence team.

Their sentences were initially upheld by a tribunal over evidence the judiciary said was found on their phones of them setting alight banks, buses and public buildings during the wave of anti-government protests.

Amnesty International said Iran executed at least 251 people last year, the world's second highest toll after China.

Source: Agence France-Presse, SBS, Staff, December 12, 2020

Execution of Dissident Journalist Ruhollah Zam is a Crime and Iran Must be Held Accountable

Iran Human Rights ((HR); December 12, 2020: Ruhollah Zam, the director of the AmadNews Telegram channel, was executed in an unknown location on charges of "corruption on earth" early this morning.

Iran Human Rights condemns the execution in the strongest terms and calls for a strong response from the international community. Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, IHR director and spokesperson said: “Ruhollah Zam’s execution is a crime and the Islamic Republic authorities must be held accountable. In addition to it being a cruel and inhumane punishment, he was executed for running a news outlet, which is not a crime in any state with minimum freedom of speech standards. Kidnapping, denying him due process and an unfair trial are the other crimes of the Islamic Republic in Zam’s case.”

According to the judiciary’s Mizan news agency, political activist and the director of AmadNews Telegram channel, Ruhollah Zam, was executed at dawn on 12 December 2020. The report does not specify the exact location of the execution.

According to the report, the preliminary court has considered 13 counts of charges against Ruhollah Zam as instances of corruption on earth and sentenced him to death on that basis.

The charges in the report are: “committing crimes against the international and external security of the state, publishing widespread lies, assisting in demolition, assisting in disrupting the economic system of the state, disrupting internal and external national security, espionage for the intelligence services of a country in the region, espionage for French intelligence services from early 1397 (Spring 2018) until his arrest, co-operating with the hostile US government against the Islamic Republic in the second half of Esfand 1396 (second week of March 2018) until his arrest, assembly and collusion with intent to commit crimes against internal and external security, participating in propaganda activities against the Islamic Republic system in favour of dissident groups and organisations, participating in misleading and inciting people to war and killings in Day 1396 (December 2017-January 2018), participating in the collection of classified information with the aim of disrupting national security, participating in publishing widespread lies, insulting the sanctities of Islam, acquiring property through illegitimate means and criminal complaints made by natural and legal persons.”

Speaking about Ruhollah Zam’s execution, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam said: “Other than Ali Khamenei and Ebrahim Raesi, all those involved in the kidnapping, pressure to force a confession, sentencing and confirmation of the death penalty, and execution of Ruhollah Zam, must be held accountable for their crimes.”

Zam’ initial hearings were held publicly and took place over the course of 6 sessions in Branch 15 of the Tehran Revolutionary Court, presided over by Judge Salavati. On December 8, Gholamhossein Esmaili, judiciary spokesperson, revealed that Ruhollah Zam’s death sentence had been upheld by the Supreme Court.

Ruhollah Zam, whose Telegram channel had over a million viewership at its peak, has refugee status and a residence permit in France. He was arrested during a trip to Iraq in October 2019 and subsequently transferred to Iran.

A day after the Revolutionary Guards announced news of Ruhollah Zam's arrest, the French newspaper, Le Figaro reported that Mr Zam had been lured to visit Baghdad under the pretext of meeting Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Iraq's Shiite leader in Najaf, where he was arrested.

Source: iranhr.net, Staff, December 12, 2020

🚩 | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Alabama executes Jeremy Williams

Tennessee and Oklahoma have put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men in one day. Tennessee and Oklahoma put inmates to death within 30 minutes of each other Thursday, and Alabama followed suit hours later as U.S. states executed three men by lethal injection in one day for the first time since 2010. The Tennessee man was executed for killing a maid at a motel in 1985, and the Oklahoma man for killing his girlfriend in 2003. In Alabama, a man was put to death Thursday evening for killing a 5-year-old girl he had paid her mother to abuse.

Tennessee executes Darrell Hines

The state has spent millions of dollars over decades to execute a seriously ill man who was already incarcerated. The state of Tennessee executed death row inmate Darrell Hines Thursday morning, according to an advocacy group. No formal announcement of the execution has been issued by state leaders yet. The execution was slated for 10 a.m. Thursday at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. [DPN update] Hines was pronounced dead at 10:43 a.m. CDT. His last meal was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, coleslaw, corn, fries, biscuits, a chicken sandwich, chocolate chip cake, and sweet tea.

Alabama Set To Carry Out Execution This Week

Alabama is preparing to execute Jeremy Williams, who pled guilty to the 2021 rape and murder of five-year-old Kamarie Holland. The execution is scheduled for Thursday (August 13) at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama. Williams, who is 41, requested the death penalty and waived his right to appeal, making this the first execution in Alabama this year.

Oklahoma executes Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez

Oklahoma has carried out 1 of 3 executions set for the same day in the United States in another sign of the resurgence of the death penalty in the country. Carlos Cuesta-Rodriguez was pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 13, at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was put to death by lethal injection for the murder of his common-law wife in 2003 at their Oklahoma City home. He admitted to police he shot her twice during an argument. Cuesta-Rodriguez, 70, did not fight for his life, stunning his attorneys in July when he told the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board that he didn't want clemency. "It's time for me to pay for what I did," he said.

Tennessee set to execute Anthony Darrell Hines

Barring any last-minute interventions, the Tennessee Department of Correction will execute Anthony Darrell Hines by lethal injection at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville Thursday morning. This week, two courts had the opportunity to halt the execution: the federal court in Middle Tennessee and the U.S. Supreme Court. Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday he personally would not prevent the execution. “After deliberate consideration of Anthony Darrell Hines’ request for clemency, and after a thorough review of the case, I am upholding the sentence of the State of Tennessee and do not plan to intervene,” he said in a written statement. The U.S. Supreme Court has not granted a stay or reprieve.

Tennessee | The doctor who helps put prisoners to death

Dr. Mark Fowler assisted in the failed execution of a Tennessee prisoner. Physicians are meant to heal patients—why is he working in the death chamber? Mark Fowler, a physician with 25 years’ experience, stepped beneath the bright lights and approached the middle-aged man lying on a gurney. Around him, people in medical gowns prepared needles and sterile tubing. It had all the appearances of a hospital setting. Fowler had been called in to help establish an IV line through which the 57-year-old man, Tony Carruthers, would be injected with pharmaceutical drugs. The team had struggled to find a vein, so Fowler was summoned to set a central line—an intravenous catheter inserted into the major vein below the collarbone.

Iran’s War on Women: Executions, Floggings, and the Politics of Fear

The Iranian regime is increasingly using death sentences, corporal punishment, and judicial persecution against women—not only to silence dissent but also to intimidate a society demanding change. The Iranian regime has long viewed women as central to the country’s struggle for freedom—and therefore as central targets of repression. The nationwide uprising of 2022 fundamentally altered the political landscape, demonstrating that Iranian women were no longer merely participants in protest movements but among their principal organizers and symbols. Since then, the authorities have steadily intensified their campaign against women, expanding the use of executions, imprisonment, corporal punishment, and judicial intimidation.

The 'Black Widow' shakes Iran: 10 death sentences for a serial killer who killed 12 men

Kolthum Akbari, an Iranian woman widely dubbed the “Black Widow,” was convicted of serial murders of elderly men she married, often temporarily. Official accounts generally center on 11 murders (plus one attempted murder), though Akbari herself gave varying figures and investigations suggested she had many more marriages. The sentencing occurred primarily in September 2025 in Mazandaran Province, with ongoing reporting and updates into 2026. The 56- to 59-year-old killer confessed to killing at least 11 elderly men after temporarily or officially marrying them; Iranian authorities have linked her to additional marriages and possible further victims.

Arizona prosecutors seek death penalty a second time for 2 inmates

County Attorney Brad Miller said Aug. 6 that the nature of the attack and both men's past criminal records meet the strict legal bar required for execution under Arizona law. FLORENCE, Ariz. - Pinal County prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against two inmates accused of violently killing a fellow prisoner behind bars, officials announced Thursday. Pinal County Attorney Brad Miller filed a Notice of Intent to Seek the Death Penalty against Pete Van Winkle and Tracy Hampton in connection with the fatal attack on Kenneth Thompson.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine issues three death penalty reprieves

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine issued execution reprieves for three death row inmates on Friday. In a statement, DeWine said he issued reprieves for Keith LaMar, Scott Group, and Davel Chinn, all of whom were set to be executed early next year. LaMar was scheduled to be executed on Jan. 13, 2027. He was convicted of aggravated murder for the deaths of five inmates during a 1993 riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution in Lucasville. He received the death penalty for four of the killings. His new execution date is Jan. 13, 2030. Watch the latest NBC4 headlines in the video player above.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog